School Lands experience

Dcast- I do opener every year so I won't see you this time. I often don't have a dog with me anyway with just one other guy to walk with his dog in my group, depending on how the hunt is working out. On a previous version of this site I went by 2LeggedBirdog which sums up my role in the hunt- fire off both barrels of the O/U and then get in the ditch. I stopped that after a few too many "get back in there" after coming back without the bird. That and my old hips getting sore.

I hunt by principle, not law so I don't even need to consult a rule book on cattle. If I can see them, even on the horizon, I don't get out. I've seen cattle startle across even across the whole section from gunshots. Cattle in a fence or ditch is nothing I want to be the cause of. I'll double the distance from a driveway or buildings as well and not shoot in their direction just in case.

I've think what I'm going to do is show up at the farmers door as I'm scouting these sites and let them know my intent to be on the school land adjacent to them. I suppose I'll get a mix of- your maps wrong, I was saving that for friends, etc. But I bet I'll also get a few permissions to keep going on a few sloughs where I would have stopped, trying to stay within the lines, for just being polite.
 
I bet you do too, good luck PeteRevvv, I enjoy internet scouting as well, it is fun to see if your work correlates in the field, right?
 
I agree! I've had some great success on school lands. One parcel was milo one year that was never harvested and full of roosters.
 
Mixed results from this strategy after putting tires to gravel and boots to the ground. The public lands I put into a custom Google Map ended up being in an area we didn't hunt much since the reports of low birds numbers were pretty much accurate. However we did drive by 8 of the sites I had mapped out. 75% of them were either pasture or mowed grass. Of those with huntable cover, some were not favorable conditions being too large for a couple guys to easily hunt or not near crops that were holding birds. Those few that were ideal held about the same number of birds as the ditches in the area. So they were not necessarily honey holes with concentrated bird numbers. Those kind of place do exist but you find them much more often on private land setup for good bird habitat.

As for tech, the Google Maps worked out OK but it took a lot of effort to map them out and thus I was limited. However the ones I did map out on computer went right into the phone google maps and I got live GPS tracking driving up to the land and while working it.

While looking around for other mapping options, I did find that SDGFP does provide a KML file version overlay map that works with Google Earth. However Earth doesn't provide update location data, no matter how many times you hit My Location in the menu- a big pain when you're trying to drive around to the spots. You do get live GPS locations in Maps but the KML file is too big to import. I am looking at breaking it up the KML into multiple sections and see how that works.
 
PeteRevvv said:
Mixed results from this strategy after putting tires to gravel and boots to the ground. The public lands I put into a custom Google Map ended up being in an area we didn't hunt much since the reports of low birds numbers were pretty much accurate. However we did drive by 8 of the sites I had mapped out. 75% of them were either pasture or mowed grass. Of those with huntable cover, some were not favorable conditions being too large for a couple guys to easily hunt or not near crops that were holding birds. Those few that were ideal held about the same number of birds as the ditches in the area. So they were not necessarily honey holes with concentrated bird numbers. Those kind of place do exist but you find them much more often on private land setup for good bird habitat.

As for tech, the Google Maps worked out OK but it took a lot of effort to map them out and thus I was limited. However the ones I did map out on computer went right into the phone google maps and I got live GPS tracking driving up to the land and while working it.

While looking around for other mapping options, I did find that SDGFP does provide a KML file version overlay map that works with Google Earth. However Earth doesn't provide update location data, no matter how many times you hit My Location in the menu- a big pain when you're trying to drive around to the spots. You do get live GPS locations in Maps but the KML file is too big to import. I am looking at breaking it up the KML into multiple sections and see how that works.
Click to expand...

If your into GIS that much try GIS PRO. It has its quirks but I use it almost every day.
 
The school lands were just extension of what was around them. Not much to complain about a 6,000 acre pasture and 40 of that is school land or a 160 acre section that is harvest beans. Both are flat like everything else around them, just nothing there for hunters. Makes you appreciate the ones that have been improved by SDGFP or privately planted for birds and what a difference it makes.

I'm not that far into GIS yet and it does appear SDGFP did have files friendly for Nuvi and Garmen units. However if I can get them split up and imported into Google Maps on the phone, then I will have a solution that is good, fast and cheap. That rarely happens in technology solutions.
 
The SDGFP public land data is about 42MB of data so that would mean 8-9 files to import to Google Maps to stay under their 5MB limit- even then I'm not sure how it would perform. Its all XML data format but I couldn't tell what I was looking at for whether it was school land, WIA, GPA/WPA, CREP/CRP or other plots to try and separate them. So I've e-mailed them and asked if they can divide the KML data they provide online into sections like West River N, West River S, East River NE, East River NW, etc. That should get it under the limit while still allowing you to get just what you need into a Google Maps overlay.

I did try out their Avenza offline mobile maps but that map behind it is the same blocky cartoon as their online ArcGIS maps. Google Maps are much more detailed from updated roads, all roads having a street name, options for satellite or terrain instead of just road map.

I've seen other people mention that SDGFP got back to them rather quickly so perhaps I'll get a timely response from them.
 
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